


A Bit of Terrific

by innie



Category: Some Like It Hot (1959)
Genre: Dealing with In-Law(s), F/M, Friends and family being way too involved in wedding planning, Friends giving wedding gifts, M/M, Something Old Something New Something Borrowed Something Blue, Their Marriage Can Never Be Legal (But That's Okay)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-05-16 21:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19326025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: It's a bit of a winding road to the altar.





	A Bit of Terrific

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/gifts).



> I just loved getting to rewatch this amazing movie, so thanks to Miss_M for the request! I hope this suits!

"What 'we'?" would probably have been the refrain of his signature number if anyone ever got around to making a musical about his life. _We_ was a charm Joe pronounced endlessly, used shamelessly, and promised extravagantly, and damn if he didn't fall for it every time. _We_ was how Jerry'd ended up without an overcoat in a Chicago winter, making him envy his bull fiddle, and _we_ was how he'd been conned out of his chance to win over Sugar and into shaving himself from the eyebrows down to seduce a credulous millionaire. 

_We_ had a lot of explaining to do, Jerry figured.

He wasn't going to press Joe, not right now, when there were four of them in this little speedboat fleeing for safety. And not before he had it out with Osgood over their engagement's still being on.

*

The first time he'd shaved his legs, it was in wide and hasty stripes that left his skin raw and his legs looking like they'd been attacked by a gardener drunk as a skunk; he couldn't get that _rat-tat-tat_ , that percussion of lives ending against a wall, out of his head long enough to shake the shakes. But pretty soon, surprisingly, that _light_ feeling bubbled up, the sense that as long as he didn't look like himself, he didn't have to _be_ himself. It happened every time he dressed up — put him in a tux and he couldn't trust a word out of his own mouth, he was as bad as Joe with the insincerity — but he was well aware of his own tendencies and so he steered clear of dames until he was back to himself, good old Jerry, garbed in gabardine, everybody's friend and nobody's lover or louse.

Hadn't he been the one all the girls in the chorus line at Mozarella's Funeral Parlor turned to when they needed a pal, and Joe was too busy making time with the next dame to catch his eye to bother? All those girls had been the bee's knees, and it was thanks to them he knew how to keep his stockings straight and his hemline just at the knee. Once the wedding was done — the holy union of Osgood's goods with his conspicuous lack thereof — he'd send each of them an envelope with a nice note and the money he and Joe owed them. 

*

What he wouldn't give for Sugar's "cocktail shaker," that tired old hot-water bottle filled to the brim with bourbon, but Osgood couldn't comprehend that anyone might be nervous to meet his Mama. Really, Jerry thought, one might hope that _seven or eight past fiancées_ would have enlightened him, but Osgood was so sure of his position as the apple of his mother's eye that the notion failed to penetrate.

Sugar was the one who hauled herself out of bed to help him dress. "First things first, Daphne, you need a real nice, close shave," she said and then leaned over him in her filmy little wrap and lathered up his face. Sugar was his best friend's girl and Jerry willed himself to look anywhere but where he wanted. Closing his eyes was no kind of a solution as she got close enough that their chests were pressed together and his legs were spread around her hips. He opened his eyes and looked at her thoughtful face, studying it as carefully as she was inspecting his denuded jawline. She was a real knockout, too good for any of them, and why hadn't Osgood taken one look at her and let his tongue roll out like a wolf's? He didn't think he'd ever understand what made Osgood tick, but he guessed he was happy enough that things had shaken out the way they had. 

Sugar surprised him out of his thoughts with a kiss on the tip of his nose and a friendly peck on his mouth. "You know you're my first?" she said in her breathy whisper.

"First what?" he asked, pushing golden locks away from her face.

"My first real friend," she said, then went after him with a hot towel. "There, you're all done. Osgood's eyes are going to roll right out of his head when he sees you — you just get better and better looking. Must be love."

"Must be," he agreed. Before she could get going with the makeup she'd selected for him, he drew her in with an arm hooked fraternally around her neck and kissed the side of her head. Her hair was as soft and fragrant as cotton candy. "Let's hope it lasts."

* 

"What's this?" he asked when Osgood's driver — he never could remember the man's name, but his face was hard to forget, looking like the kindest, lumpiest potato in the bin — pulled up at a restaurant instead of the mansion where her future mother-in-law lived. There was a gaggle of girls at the big table on the patio, and Osgood rolled down his window and waved merrily at them. Like they'd been trained — _had_ they been? could they be the girls from Mozarella's, Midge and Janey and Hetty and the rest? — they waved back in unison, all elbows and wrists.

"Rathbone will be back at two to pick you up for tea at Mama's," Osgood said briskly, kissing his cheek. "I thought I'd give you a chance to get acquainted with the girls."

"What girls? Who are they?" If there was one thing that got him skittish, it was a conspiracy, and this one had at least ten participants: nine dames and one smirking fiancé.

"Toodle-oo," Osgood said, and Jerry recognized a cue well enough to hoist himself out of the car. "Rathbone, Mama's by way of the florist."

Right. He marched over to the patio and confronted the women. Nine of them, all strikingly beautiful and suspiciously graceful, like a chorus line at a top-drawer club, and it hit him all of a sudden: these were Osgood's ex-wives. His realization must have been written clear across his face.

"We'll forgive you the membership dues just this once," said a tall brunette, lifting a slender foot to her mouth to take a drag from her cigarette, "since you're not yet an ex, but you're welcome to join the club."

"Rosella!" a bubbly blonde scolded as she approached with her hand outstretched. "Give Daphne a chance to get her bearings — oh!" Her eyes were fixed on his adam's apple and they widened perilously.

There was no mistaking that tone; he'd been fingered for a phony. Shock made the warm murmur of welcome die out like a velvet curtain had fallen and he sighed, took off his hat and wig, and plunked himself down.

"You know, this might be just what Osgood needs," a petite little freckled bit of business said. " _You_ know, girls."

The murmur of the exes rose to a dull roar as they all considered the proposition from that angle, and Jerry really needed to know what on earth that meant. "What might be what Osgood needs? Me? A man?"

"You know those hunting dogs they have in England? The kind that are supposed to fetch what their masters have shot but never take a bite for themselves?" These questions were put to him by a dimpled dame with long black hair. "That's Osgood: loves the chase, never has any idea what to do with the prize."

She was quite a prize. They all were, he saw, looking around, and they just kept looking back at him with kind and sympathetic eyes. _I'm not a prize_ he meant to say, but what came out was, "I'm parched."

"Of course you are, honey!" That was Freckles again. "Cecily, get Daph-, sorry, get him some water at least. I'm Loretta. And these are Cynara, Donna, Maddy, Sally, Marie, and Louise."

"Jerry," he said, then threw the water back like a shot. Another glass was in front of him instantly and he ignored the lipstick stain on the rim — Loretta's, going by the color — because he'd left one of his own that looked just like it. "Am I still invited to be part of the club?" he asked; nothing sensible was going through his head.

"Ah, honey, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be taken care of," said the black-haired beauty, Cynara. "Osgood's pretty good at that part. It's his mother you have to watch out for — once she makes up her mind, you're through, and all you've got is a monthly check and this club." That didn't sound so bad. In fact, it sounded almost exactly like what he'd bargained for, just with nine new friends. He nodded his relief that laws and conventions hadn't crossed a single one of their minds, and it was nice, wasn't it, that they were all rooting for him?

Loretta whispered, "Beware 'Mother Geraldine.'" Jerry swallowed wrong and soon had half a dozen little hands clapping his back. He _knew_ there had to be a reason he'd never liked the name Geraldine.

*

The girls set his wig and hat to rights before Rathbone's return and he faced Mother Geraldine a little tipsy — presumably, one of the rites of female puberty was figuring out damned good places to keep concealed liquor in case masculine foolishness precipitated something as asinine as Prohibition — and armed with the intimate knowledge of how exactly she'd put the kibosh on her son's plans for wedded bliss in all nine innings played thus far. Game over, Jerry thought triumphantly. 

Mother Geraldine took the wind out of his sails with her gimlet eye and her surprisingly pleased smile. "Well, my wedding gown certainly can't be altered to fit you," she said, sitting back and conducting an invisible orchestra with her lace fan; Jerry had heard all about that fan and its bone spine's descent on luckless knuckles. "My tiara will suit you perfectly, Daphne."

"Oh," he said, taken aback by this seemingly easy acceptance. He found himself tipping up his chin so she could take a good gander at his adam's apple. Mother Geraldine didn't bat an eye. "That's most gracious of you, Mother Geraldine."

"Isn't it?" she asked. Osgood grinned between them, evidently made supremely content by the harmonious atmosphere. "You can repay me by making my Ossie happy." She pinched her son's weathered cheek and he beamed in response.

It hit Jerry like a ton of bricks that the person that Mother Geraldine reminded him of was Joe; they both had a gift for sneaky flattery and a blithe determination that they could have whatever they wanted. He supposed that made him and Osgood a pair of saps dragged ruthlessly along by superior wills, and he resolved then and there to be as good a wife as he could.

*

"So I've got something old — Mother Geraldine's tiara — and the girls are chipping in for earrings, you know, the long dangly kind, for something blue," he said, happily checking items off. He loved lists when he could actually cross things off and feel productive.

"What girls?" Joe asked. Boy, the shoe pinched mightily when it was on the other foot and Jerry was the one holding all the cards.

"Never you mind. Oh, and Sugar said she'd lend me her garters for something borrowed." He ignored Joe's spluttering about Sugar's unmentionables and pressed on. "That makes you responsible for the something new, buster."

"Me? How'd I get roped into this?"

"Oh, Junior, remember when I developed that convenient case of seasickness so that pheasant could be torn upon a certain yacht?"

"I'm flat broke! Might as well put my belongings in a bindle."

"See, you've got belongings!" Jerry said. For once, for _once_ , Joe was not going to be allowed to weasel his way out of anything. "And I need a wedding dress."

"What?" Joe yelped, sounding genuinely wounded. Go for the gut and he'd laugh it off, but smack him in the wallet and he was begging for mercy. "D'you want me to have to hock the saxophone?"

"I'll find something inexpensive," Jerry promised. "Something around the price of a Chicago overcoat," he said, and Joe sank back in defeat.

*

Osgood asked over breakfast what he wanted to do that evening and Sugar, wandering in all dreamy and tousle-haired, said brightly, "You should go dancing!" before stealing a croissant and wandering back out.

"Look at you, all lit up like a firecracker," Osgood murmured into his neck, where Jerry wasn't used to feeling a mouth so early in the morning. "Shall we, my dear?"

He'd bought a dark green dress that brought out his eyes and a chestnut wig with a little more oomph to it. Maybe dancing would get him out of his half-Jerry half-Daphne funk, when he had nothing to do — Osgood's staff took care of everything — and nothing left to plan as Mother Geraldine assured her that she and Osgood were such old hat at weddings that the only surprise would be what the bride would wear. (Or not wear, as it seemed that Maddy and Marie had worn what Mother Geraldine regarded as little more than nightgowns. " _In the church_ ," she hissed, her eyes sparking ominously, and Jerry could tell his sex was far less of an issue for her than a bared shoulder. Mother Geraldine was a little funny.)

"Yes," he said. Osgood kissed his neck and sat back and Jerry wasn't going to let the shock of it stop him from pouring out orange juice for both of them like he did every morning.

*

Rathbone drove them to the church, and said, "Miss Daphne, if you'll look to your left." Jerry had never heard him speak before — he had a voice made for the stage, all creamy and deep — and was too surprised by being addressed to listen to the advice. When he finally did, he looked, only to see Joe's big mug in the way. Jerry pushed his shoulder back and peered out the window, feeling Sugar pop up behind him to look too. There were the girls, Cynara and Loretta right out front, Rosella in the back with her inevitable cigarette, all of them doing that coordinated wave.

Jerry reached across Joe to wave back and toss his head so the earrings they'd given him were visible. Rathbone honked a cheery salute and proceeded to the church.

It didn't look like a particularly reputable church — it couldn't be all that strict if Osgood was entering into matrimony on an annual basis — but it was pretty enough. The last thing he needed was to be outshone by not only his maid of honor but the church too. "Master Osgood and Mother Geraldine are within, Miss Daphne," Rathbone said. "I'll let you out here and be back to escort Miss Sugar down the aisle." They tottered out of the car, Joe looking oddly nervous and Sugar as bubbly as the champagne Osgood ordered every time they went dancing.

Sugar kissed him, too quickly for their lipstick to smudge. "You look like a queen, honey. Osgood's a lucky fella."

"Me too," he said, and she patted his cheek.

Rathbone returned, an orchid in his buttonhole to match the ones Sugar was carrying, and they set out down the aisle. Jerry gave his dress a few tugs so it would drape just right and put his hand on Joe's arm. Joe was jittery as a junebug and squeezed him much too hard. "What is the matter with you?" Jerry asked.

"Can't I be allergic to weddings?"

"No!"

"Can't I be worried about how this is all gonna turn out?"

"No." Either he got Osgood or he got the girls, but either way, he had Sugar and Joe in his corner and he'd be just fine.

"Can't I just be glad to be with my best friend?"

"Joe, so help me, if you make my mascara run, I'll end you."

"And then where would we be?"

"'We' indeed." He could hear the music changing from sweet to hot, a jazzy version of "Here Comes the Bride." Osgood turned at the altar to grin at him. "Let's go — they're playing my song."


End file.
